


Long Weekend / Ever After

by Dee_Laundry



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Afterlife, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-22
Updated: 2008-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Laundry/pseuds/Dee_Laundry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilson spirals down; House waits.</p><p>Then House gets to start over. That's a good thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Long Weekend

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through episode 5-4. Thank you to Early Readers, including especially [](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/profile)[**nightdog_barks**](http://nightdog-barks.livejournal.com/) and [](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/profile)[**daisylily**](http://daisylily.livejournal.com/) for support.

Wilson gets fired on Friday. Walks out of Cuddy’s office with a smile on his face. He’s _happy_ he got fired, which doesn’t surprise House. Not given what Wilson’s been up to – or, rather, _not_ up to lately.

“You wanted Cuddy to can you,” House says, falling into step right next to Wilson as he pushes out past the Clinic doors. “No chance of getting guilted into staying if you make her push instead of walking out yourself.”

Wilson doesn’t respond. He never responds lately, but that’s all right. House understands why.

 _Slam_ , through the stairwell door, and Wilson’s going up the steps two at a time. The lab coat billows out like wings. House waits at the bottom of the staircase for Wilson to come back down again with whatever trinkets he’ll take from his office.

  
Wilson bangs Taub’s wife on Saturday. Could’ve picked anyone for this, House thinks at first, but it turns out that’s not true. Wilson needs the anger of a woman scorned – whether forgiveness has been given or not – and he wants the guilt that comes from knowing he’s betrayed someone he knows. Again. It’s a particular kind of guilt he wants: sandspur guilt covered in spikes that pierce and cling. The kind that stays with you, under your skin, nettles, settles, doesn’t go away.

  
Wilson destroys House’s couch on Sunday. Takes a honking big chef’s knife to it, stabbing, ripping. He plunges the blade in over and over.

At one point he hits frame and his arm jars. House wonders if the shoulder’s dislocated, the way that Wilson’s shouting and jumping, but no. Wilson proves that a moment later when he takes a sidearm swing and rends the back cushion from one side to the other.

Fluff spouts from the gash, and Wilson takes no notice whatsoever.

  
Wilson dies on Monday. Barely Monday – 12:03 – but Monday nonetheless. House watches his chest fail to rise for thirty seconds, counted off precisely, and then turns to the left.

Empty air.

He looks back at Wilson’s body, sees no movement, and counts for sixty seconds, then another twenty just to be safe. Dead. Wilson’s definitely dead. House looks out around the room, searching.

Empty air.

The low rumble of chuckling bypasses House’s ears and pounds directly into his heart. “You son of a bitch,” he says.

“Don’t talk about your grandmother that way,” John House replies, stepping into view.

“You said –”

Dad shakes his head. “You never learned how to listen, did you, boy? Never. I said you’d get to see him, and I said he’d die. I didn’t say you’d get to see him _after_ he died.”

House looks down at the lifeless body. “Where’d he go?”

“Hell if I know,” Dad says. “Want to go hang around your girl Lisa? She’s got a hell of a body, and she’ll probably be hitting the shower in a couple of hours.”

House ignores the suggestion. “Where did he go?”

“You think anybody tells me anything? Chain of command, son. Need to know. God figures I don’t need to know; I figure you don’t need to know. Got any reason you want to hang around this empty old place?”

House shakes his head.

Dad clamps an unwelcome hand on his shoulder and nods off toward the distance. “Well, then let’s get a move on.”


	2. Ever After

It’s been a while since Wilson breathed his last. A week, maybe? Time doesn’t have much meaning here.

House did go to Cuddy’s that first night, pretty much because he couldn’t think of what else to do. Cuddy woke up about five, took off her nightgown, and then...

A very gorgeous, very naked woman – one who’d featured in House’s fantasies far more than once – took a steamy, sensuous shower as House watched _with his Dad_. Mortifying. A strange turn of phrase for the afterlife, but still the most appropriate word.

Mortifying.

He hustled Dad out after that, and they drifted for a while. Here, there, everywhere, nowhere.

Dad imparts life lessons – afterlife lessons – with the same regularity and odd fervor that he had when House was young. And, as they were when House was young, the lessons are admonishments with very little actual useful information in them.

“God will speak to you when you’re ready.”

“Patience, boy, will get you by.”

“Just because you want something, doesn’t mean you deserve to get it. And even deserving it doesn’t mean you _will_ get it. Unless it’s being taken down a peg. That you’ll get every time.”

They’re in a weird nowhere land: a stump that Dad’s sitting on, grass underneath, but no sky at all. Dad’s whittling; House can’t remember where he got the knife. Maybe he’s had it all along.

Dad’s talking again, more lessons, more words that weave together into a tarp that wraps around House’s heart, squeezing him, making him feel small. He’s feeling very small, heartsick, weighed down, and it’s at that moment that God speaks to him.

Not in words. Not even in pictures. Suddenly, his mind is just clear. Like the burnoff of a morphine haze, he can think again. There’s one thought in his mind, and it slides down his brain stem, flips up and out of his mouth: “You’re not my real father.”

John House straightens up, drops the wood and knife, and stares solemnly at House. “No, I am not.”

House feels a tickle on his neck, and swings around. There’s Wilson, standing fifty yards away. Amber’s with him, behind a little, hand on his shoulder, but he only has eyes for House. Warm eyes. A hint of a smile that _means_ something.

He turns back to John House, who’s sitting straight and rigid on the stump. “I don’t have to stay with you,” House says.

“No. You do not.”

It’s not permission, House realizes. It’s _admission_ , confirmation of something House knows.

“You’re right,” John House says, and House is surprised not to feel elation at those words. No triumph, because John House is nothing to him. Might as well be a concrete building or a swath of landscape rolling by. Nothing House ever has to give another thought to, and he heads off, toward Wilson.

He’s running, feet pelting, and with every stride his legs grow a little shorter, and his arms, and his torso, so that by the time he’s just steps away, he’s aiming at Wilson’s knees, but Wilson grabs him up. Swings his feet off the ground like flying, and hoists him high, up where they can see each other, and that’s _home_ there, home in Wilson’s eyes and Wilson’s arms.

“My mom’s not dead yet,” House says.

“I know,” Wilson says, right arm holding House securely on Wilson’s hip, left hand smoothing down House’s hair.

House likes how warm Wilson’s hand is. “And I don’t have a dad.”

“You could if you wanted,” Wilson says, telling House something he already knows. They look at each other for a long minute, and it’s happy and scary at the same time, but then Wilson gets brave and says, “ _I’d_ really like to be your dad.”

A chance to start again, that’s what God’s offering. Start from the beginning and see what else might be made of him.

House looks at Wilson’s chest. No pocket protector; nothing shielding his heart. “You’d do it right?”

Wilson shifts his hand, puts his thumb under House’s chin to tilt House’s head up and look him straight in the eyes. “I can’t promise that I’ll be perfect, only that I’ll try with _everything_ I have. I’ve got the loving you part down, for sure.”

“You’ll teach me to be better?”

“House, you never needed to be _better_. You just needed to learn how to stop getting in the way of your own happiness.”

House kicks a little, nudges Wilson’s tummy with a knee. “You weren’t so great at that yourself.”

Wilson laughs, a hearty laugh House hadn’t heard in years. “Can we try to learn together?”

“Yes,” House says, “I want to,” and his Wilson’s squeezing him tight, kissing his head, heart pressed to heart, and there might be some tears in there somewhere but mostly there are smiles of every different sort.

Even Amber’s smiling, when House bothers to look up. “Her, I don’t like so much,” House whispers to his Wilson.

“That’s OK,” Wilson says. “I like her well enough for the both of us.”

House clutches tighter to his Wilson’s neck. “You won’t leave me for her?”

“I won’t leave you at all.” Wilson’s arms tighten again around House’s back, so secure. “But I want her to stay with us, too.”

Laying down the law, setting the record straight, House insists, “She’s not my mother.”

“Well, thank God for that,” Amber says, rolling her eyes.

“Literally?” House throws back, and they all laugh.

Amber’s hand on Wilson’s shoulder doesn’t seem like a grappling hook anymore. It’s just a hand. One that soothes Wilson, one that Wilson likes having there. House can put up with it, for his Wilson’s sake.

In the midst of this, of home, of coming to terms, a question re-occurs to House. “Where did you go?” he asks his Wilson. “After you died.”

“I don’t know,” Wilson says. “Here, there, and everywhere. I saw my grandmothers first, just like I remember them from when I was a kid. They’re _great_ cooks; you’re going to love them. And my grandfathers, and my Uncle Irwin.” Wilson chuckles. “His breath still stinks, but he’s a good guy.”

“You didn’t see Amber first?”

His Wilson smiles at Amber, a twinkle in his eye. “Not first, but close to first.”

Amber twinkles back, and House pulls closer to Wilson, plasters himself to Wilson’s skin. “Sooner than me,” he says sadly, quietly, but Wilson hears it and lifts House up again to look in his eyes.

“I _wanted_ to see you,” Wilson says earnestly.

House raises an eyebrow. They tried the obfuscation thing for years, hiding truth in lies and lies in truth. House has had enough of that shit.

“You were angry when you died,” he says. “Angry at me.”

Yes,” Wilson admits. “I wanted to see you and didn’t want to at the same time. I got over the anger pretty quickly, though.” He twiddles House’s hair. “But I knew I still had to wait. Didn’t know why. It just wasn’t time.”

House hugs his Wilson, arms around Wilson’s neck, cheek pressed to cheek. “You weren’t ready.”

“Or you weren’t. I don’t know. But it was worth the wait.”

“Yeah.” He hugs tighter.

It shouldn’t make any difference that they can now name this thing they have, but it does. Wilson is _his_ , forever, and he’s Wilson’s. And now they can have more on top. Wilson can have Amber, and for House, it’s open. Once he learns how, he can have more people in his life (in his afterlife) – friends, as many as he wants. More connections, more things to learn, but always, _always_ in the end, his Wilson.

“How old is he?” Amber asks.

“Old enough to answer his own questions,” Wilson replies, a little laugh in his voice. House wiggles and stretches, and Wilson gets the clue and sets him down on the ground.

“I think I’m a grown man,” House tells Amber. “I feel I’m a little kid.”

“You _look_ like you’re about two.” She’s _really_ tall. It’s disconcerting, in a way Wilson’s height isn’t.

“Nah, not that young,” House insists. “I just didn’t want to break Wilson’s back when he picked me up. I can be any size I want.”

Arched eyebrow – her face is quite pretty, and her long blond hair looks good pulled back like it is. “Really?”

 _Bigger_ , House thinks, and nothing happens.

Amber’s smirk is very annoying.

 _Bigger_ , House thinks, _bigger, bigger, bigger_!

“It’s OK,” Wilson says, “I believe you,” and suddenly House feels the concept of bigger, and zoom, there he goes.

“Huh,” Wilson says, from his suddenly less far-away height. “About eight, I’d guess.”

“That sounds about right,” House says, and throws his arms around his Wilson’s abdomen.

Wilson’s smaller hands hold him just as warmly. Two or eight, doesn’t matter. Except it does, a little.

“Can you get any bigger than that?” Wilson asks.

“Nope,” House replies confidently. “Not now.”

“Not until you’re ready,” his Wilson concurs, and House is slipping down Wilson’s legs, shorter, shorter, and arms straining high.

Wilson grins and picks him up again, both arms around him, chest to chest, like a piggy-back ride but in front. Amber’s hand slips into House’s view again, lightly around his Wilson’s bicep, and it’s all right. House doesn’t mind.

“What now?” Amber asks. She said the same thing on the bus, only that wasn’t her, and anyway, that was a very long time ago.

Wilson kisses the top of House’s head and then starts walking. “I was thinking, lunch.”

“Is it lunch time?” House asks.

“It is if we want it to be,” Wilson replies.

“OK,” House says, soothed by their forward movement, with Wilson’s heartbeat strong and steady in his ear. “First we’ll have lunch.”


End file.
